The Strategic Counsel, a polling firm located in Canada has released a report saying that most *computer addicts* rely on search engines to go to different websites, even if the web site name is easy to remember. In the survey recently done by The Strategic Counsel, it was found out that the popular search engine sites are Google, Yahoo, Lycos, and Alta Vista to locate websites that they want to visit and explore. In fact, the federal Government of Canada even paid Strategic Counsel a huge sum of sixty-five thousand dollars. The study also revealed that there's a slim or no chance at all that the people would remember the exact universal resource locator address given the existence of search engines. For most people, the easiest and fastest way to find what they are looking for is via search engines.

Search engines play a relevant role especially for those who are in the pay per click marketing industry where the rank of the sites in the search engine counts. This is actually the key weapon in earning big bucks in online business. The report published by The Strategic Counsel is vital in online business because as long search engines are thriving, pay per click marketing will flourish. It's a matter of enhancing your url and your domain names so that people will be attracted to click on your sites. Make sure that it will cause a lot of traffic, in order to profit. Search engines are useful springboards where people can go to different sites that they never imagine existed. This is also beneficial for those who own several web sites and domain names because there's a huge chance that their site is visited with the help of the search engine.

On the other hand in United Kingdom, Fasthosts has reported that United Kingdom's online businesses are shrinking because the consumers are tired of businesses that are dependent on free web hosting. Fasthosts, the top one webhost in September 2005 as conducted by Tophosts.com, found out that the usage of free web hosting do not result well in the profit of UK's online businesses. SME's or small and medium enterprises succumb to free web hosting without realizing the dangers that it could cause their business. There are still many unknown factors or aspects of free web hosting that businesses should know before they venture in it. Even if it's a free web hosting, the damages it could bring to your business is definitely high.

The reason small and medium enterprises are endangered in free web hosting is that people have a tendency not to remember your specific site since your domain name can be found in the last part of the url address, making it difficult for people to even notice. There's a rare chance that people will visit your site. There's also the problem with the search engine since it would be difficult for the engine to recognize such arduous site. According to the finding of Fasthosts, which made a survey of one hundred top free web hosts on earth, it revealed that the storage space given to small and medium enterprises are only 338 MB and that there's a restriction to the bandwidth allowances.

There's a huge possibility that small and medium enterprises would generate more expenses when they depend on free web hosting providers since the latter do not provide any safe shopping carts and ordering system. Since this is the case, they have to avail another set of security tools in order to serve better their consumers. A problem may also occur once the owner of the free web hosting decides to alter the name of the sites. Those businesses under it would have to start from the beginning since the previous customers can no longer find them. This definitely would mean lost of possible income for the small and medium enterprises.

Every small and medium enterprises are susceptible to the following disadvantages: difficulty of being located by resourceful search engines, no support for backup files, downtime every now and then which makes it not dependable servers, and absence of security to ensure product orders online.

Both the researches of Fasthosts and Strategic Counsel are helpful and informative for online industries that are sprouting anywhere. Before entering any web hosting, make sure that you're going to benefit and profit from it and not the other way around.